Note: The original writing was back in January 2019 and edited on November 29, 2022.

November 29, 2022

As the holidays roll around again, this is the special time of year when we think of our close family members, those who will visit, some we will travel to see,

and then there are others. The ones we’ve lost over the years.

For me, I think of my sister Shannon, my Mama, my sister Sharlene and my brother Steve who I’ve lost.

Over the past four years, 3 of them were gone in an 18-month period.

We had often spent our Christmas seasons together thru the years, laughing, shopping, and chasing after the most dazzling Christmas light decorations in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Today, I’m feeling melancholy, wishing that I could be with my mom and sister Shannon. I so desperately want to wrap one of my mom’s aprons around my lonely, small body and cook up a storm with them, baking endless cookies and pies and feeling the joy and connection that the holidays bring.

Wishing won’t bring them back to celebrate the holidays with us this year, but they will forever be the magic and miracles in my heart.

January 2019

As I gazed into the mirror and saw my swollen, teary-eyed face, I asked myself

“how much longer will my face be steeped in sorrow, in my eyes that shed tears like in a fierce rainstorm?

How much longer will my heart ache for my beloved spirits who lived in my heart when they were alive and well?”

I cry from my soul’s longing for what was while learning to feel everything, all of it, and embrace my beloved’s eternal love in my infinite consciousness.

I wondered, “Mom and Shannon, where are you now? Resting? Restoring?

Soaring amongst the heavens?

Are you meeting up with brother Steven in the expansiveness of the universe? If you are, please hug him for me.

I long for you to come to get dad and me.  Life just seems to be too unbearable without all of you.

How much longer shall my spirit cry out in hopelessness and what feels like infinite sorrow?

My exhausted heart is running a fast and endless endurance race in this field called grief.

“Every beat of my heart is one more that I wish mom and Shannon had.

With each new day that dawns the unknown again arrives…..

never knowing when grief and mourning will hit me next.

I shall love you dear grief, when you come again.

You and I are embracing a very intimate dance with each other and I want to get to know and love you better.

Please hold me close.” SM

The hours and days that follow seem forever lost in time.

Most days, I feel as if I’ve lost my mind. I can’t remember anything. I don’t want to speak to anyone.

Silence, stillness, and heartache overwhelm the space.

A prism of endless questions fills my head as I lie down in the darkness, exchanging labored breathing and stillness of breath.

This is life force, this air that I’m breathing in and out. I will always treasure my breath, as it is sacred, it is life itself.

I’ve witnessed in real time the final breath of life transfer the soul.

And they and I are never the same again.

I tell myself that I’ll get thru this….because God is my rock.

He walks beside me, behind me, in front of me….

No, that’s not it…..He carries me️…..

Now, in comes Deepak Chopra with his ancient wisdom.

This morning as I lay in bed, all snuggled up in my white, fluffy, cozy comforter, I was listening intently to Deepak Chopra’s podcast on life after death.

His profound wisdom found me just weeks after my mother died and his words hit me upside the head.

“Death ~ now I’m free!”

As Deepak spoke, it seemed as if my soul was literally moving in space just as the stone was rolled away from Jesus’s grave.

There was an opening, a curiosity to consider another angle on death other than the one I had been tightly held in for weeks now.

Deepak shared this idea about death,

“We who know the deathless nature of the self are not afraid of death. Egotism is an idea based on a false association of the self with the physical elements in reality. This egotism doesn’t exist any more than water exists in a mirage. This life of ours is as transient as autumn clouds; to watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.”

Deepak then went on to say

“A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down the steep mountain.

But now I am free.

I am grounded in being.

I’m grounded in the infinite consciousness and I can see lifetimes ripple by like waves in the vast ocean of consciousness.

I am free.

I am awake.

I am liberated.”

This fresh, enlightening perspective started to melt the strong rigidity I was holding in my heart.

My belief about death is similar to Deepak’s, knowing that we don’t really die. Our soul simply transforms into space and infinity.

And, I was not there yet.

I had to hold on tight to my desire, not wanting to let go. Instead, I wanted them to come back. It felt more comforting.

The days after my family had gathered to bury my mama became timeless.

Every one of them melted into the next, like a candle dripping its wax, cascading along the candle.

There was no separation from one day to the next.

Every morning I woke up, death and darkness were at my doorstep.

I felt a deep longing for my mom and two sisters to live again and ease the tremendous tremors my body was feeling from the aftermath of death.

I wasn’t ready to feel the feels of how happy they all were now, in the spatial limitless universe of love and light.

But… that powerful message Deepak was sending out to the world left me an open invitation.

I could lean in a little bit more and bring those thoughts closer to my heart.

I could release myself from suffering so much and give myself a bit of grace.

I could allow death to be a miracle,

not an eternal sentence for them or those of us left behind.

After all, no matter what I thought, felt, or did, my mom and sisters would never be walking through my front door,

ever again.

So I become open, with a little willingness and a bit of time, to transform myself and surrender to the truth, no matter how hard it is.

LOVE is eternal.

“You discover the goal of existence by living it. The present is the only time when you can evolve, experience the divine, expand your awareness, or reach enlightenment. But this cannot be a haphazard journey that falters and wanders off the path. It’s easy for that to happen when a crisis develops. Sudden losses and setbacks shake everyone up; those who keep moving forward are buoyed by knowing that their path cannot be destroyed, only interrupted”. Deepak Choprah